


Definition

by Esmethewitch



Series: Quests, Questions, & Mistakes [1]
Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Abusive Relationship, Assassins & Hitmen, Espionage, Gen, Hux Backstory, Mother-Son Relationship, Past DubCon, References to Ethically Sketchy Human Experimentation, Sad Fluff, Whump, discussion of unintended pregnancy, parenting, past polyamory
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-02
Updated: 2019-01-02
Packaged: 2019-10-02 20:23:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,371
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17270510
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Esmethewitch/pseuds/Esmethewitch
Summary: Armitage Hux's mother has a difficult conversation with her young son which reminds her of her struggles, past and present.





	Definition

**Author's Note:**

> This is a scene from a longer WIP (Leave Her Out of This) that I couldn't find a place for.  
> It can be read independently though.  
> The Mature rating is for the difficult subjects covered, particularly the previous dubcon (Brendol Hux/Hux's Mother).

She was finishing up the last of the pie shells for tomorrow when the kitchen door opened and her son stomped in. Blood trickled from a split lip. _I hope it was just a dust-up in the schoolyard._ Rinsing her hands and wiping them on a towel, she grabbed a tube of bacta gel from the medkit on the wall and a square of gauze. “Come here.”

“I’m fine, Mother.”

“You’re bleeding.”

He put a finger to his lips and pulled it away, watching the red drops roll towards the palm of his hand. “I didn’t notice.”

His mother crouched down and dabbed at his lips with the gauze. Armie tried to hold still, but flinched as the rough fibers rubbed against his wound. Then the bacta gel was daubed on. His mouth twisted a little as he tasted it.

“There. All done, Armie. Can’t have you bleeding out in a food preparation area. Now will you tell me what happened?” _Can’t have you getting hurt like this all the time, but there’s nothing for that. Short of eliminating Brendol. The one man off-limits in this hellhole. I can pick off all of his two-bit sycophants for my own pleasure, but too many people care about the plans of Commandant Hux. If the situation gets untenable,we could dye our hair, change our names, and go somewhere like Jakku or Tatooine. Maybe kneel on Mother and Father’s doorstep sobbing if I’m truly desperate. But they’d look for me back on Hosnian Prime. And they would tear my parents and my sister apart if they thought it meant something to me._

“Tobith started it.” _Thank the Force it’s only another child this time._

“How did he start it?”

“He called me a name. I didn’t know what it meant, but it sounded bad.”

“What did he say to you?” There was a time when Armie thought bad words included things like “darn”, “stupid”, and “salkat”, but that golden era was short and soon ended by Brendol’s filthy mouth. (“salkat” was a word from her native tongue that meant “small, inconveniently placed stick” and sounded conveniently similar to a ruder word. Her friends always assumed it meant “kriff” or “pfassk”--they would be disappointed.)

Armie gulped, rubbing a gob of errant bacta from his chin. “He said: ‘You shouldn’t give yourself airs, you’re just the Commandant’s bastard.’ I punched him, then he hit me. I got him in the nose in the end though. I don’t know what ‘bastard’ means.”

 _He’s six years old. We’re not ready for the full version of this conversation._ She put away the bacta gel and tossed out the bloody gauze. “This Tobith is not good at insults. The definition of ‘bastard’ is a child born to unmarried parents. Whenever someone calls you the ‘Commandant’s bastard’, it signifies nothing but the fact that I was not stupid enough to accept your father’s proposal of marriage.”

Armie looked up at her with his father’s blue eyes. “He asked you? Don’t you have to like each other to get married?”

She sighed and walked over to the stove, filling up the tea kettle. So much for getting ahead on her work. The instant she saw her son’s tiny red face, she made a vow to him: she would protect him with her life if needed and she would never tell him a direct lie.

“He asked me when it was evident that I would have you.” In the relative safety of the kitchen, her carefully cultivated Arkanis accent slipped away and was replaced by her crisp Core Worlds Basic, in a much cleaner form than Brendol could ever hope to achieve for himself.

“Oh.”

When Armitage (It was an awful name that Brendol picked, even by her own generous standards. Her given name was Brithe, not that she ever let anyone call her that anymore. Going by her designation EO-3752 was easier.) began to ask her about the facts of life, she brushed off his questions and simply said that he came into this world a bit sooner than she would have liked, but she was glad that he was her son.

“Mother, can I ask you something?”

“Yes, Armie. I can’t vouch for the quality of the answer, though.”

“I overheard Janna in Sanitation talking to somebody and she said I was an accident. That you were only staying on here because of me. How do you accidentally have a baby?”

The teakettle began to whistle. “Just a minute, kiddo.” She turned off the stove and measured a out couple spoonfuls of Tarine tea leaves, dumping them into the infuser. Then she poured on the water. To buy herself time, she went to the jungle on the windowsill and stuck her finger in the dirt in each pot of herbs. The herb-shelf was divided into two categories, with a red piece of tape down the middle. On the left were plants Armitage was permitted to touch, as they were all harmless. On the right was the danger zone. Nobody from this world would recognize any of these, but they bore a shocking resemblance in taste to the familiar ones. Right up until the alkaloids kicked in. She watered as needed, pinching off yellowed growth. _Some of these will need to be repotted soon. Armie can help with that-- he knows what to do. With the left side, anyway. I don’t trust him with my poison garden yet._ That thought disturbed her-- soon, she’d be teaching her kind little boy how to kill people. There was no question about it. To survive, he’d need to know how. He would never be strong enough to ward off potential attacks on basis of his physique alone. Like herself when she was young, he was prickly and antagonistic, so a team of dedicated allies would not save him. She took a few deep breaths and thought about what details she’d tell Armie.

“Tea?”

“Yes please, Mother.” Brithe poured a mug for her son, and one for herself. Armie wrapped his hands around the warm ceramic and sat down on the floor, resting his back against the paneling of the counter. His mother considered sitting in the one chair in the room, but she didn’t want to tower over him. Not when they were talking about this. She sat down across from him, leaning against the wall. She kept the floors very clean. The kitchen was her center of command, her castle. Her only staff were the cleaning and technical food preparation droids, with periodic visits from Janna. Daily, she checked it for hidden cameras or recording devices. This place was her domain and she would demonstrate her mastery of it.

“Why do you want to know about this?”

The boy inspected the depths of his tea. “I’m worried I’ll have a baby by accident. If you can just go about your life and have a baby without meaning to, that would be bad. I…” He trailed off, ashamed. “I...kissed somebody last week. It was gross.I like him, but not enough to keep kissing him. Not enough have a baby with him. I guess if that happened, he’d have more of an idea of what to do. He’s seven. That's one year older than me.”

Brithe took another sip of tea to keep from laughing. “You have to do a lot more than kissing to make a baby, Armie. And if you’re with another boy, you’ll probably have to take in a baby from somewhere else if you want to raise one. Two boys can’t have a baby by accident. But you don’t have to worry about any of that for a long time.” This revelation concerned her though. “Did you want to kiss the other boy? If you didn’t and he asks you again, you can tell him that you don’t want to. If he doesn’t listen to you, tell him that it’s wrong to try to kiss somebody who doesn’t want it. If that doesn’t work, hit him. If this gets to be a problem, give me his name and I’ll have a word with him. You should only touch or kiss people with their permission, and they should conduct themselves in the same manner with you.”

Armie looked at her in horror. “No, I wanted to kiss him at first. We talked about it and decided to try it. He said it was gross too. I don’t think I ever want to do that again.”

“You might some day. When you’re much older.”

“Yuck.”

“Yes, people like weird things sometimes.” They sipped their tea in silence for a few minutes.

“But you had me by accident, didn’t you Mother?”

 _He comes back to it again. Oh dear._ She chose her words carefully. “Ever since I could feel you inside of me, I knew that I loved you and that you would make me very happy. But it happened a bit sooner than I planned. Before I came to work here…” _Should I tell him this? Oh kriff, I will._ “Before I came to work at the Academy, I had the chance to get a special kind of surgery. That would keep me from having a baby no matter what I did. At the time, I didn’t want a baby. I hated scalpels and needles though.” _By the time I was fourteen, I knew that nothing good ever came out of a syringe. They pumped me so full of things to “enhance my abilities” and none of it ever worked. The EO designation was a misnomer. “Enhanced Officer” my arse. The scientists gave up in the end. I’m good at sleight of hand and hiding; not Jedi material at all._ “So I didn’t get the surgery. I didn’t want a baby at that point in my life, but I wanted the option to have a baby someday. You’re here now and that’s enough.”

Armitage looked at her skeptically. “Really?”

_Six years ago, Brendol Hux held her against a wall. He pulled at an escaping strand of her curly red hair. “So disorderly,” he whispered. She giggled nervously._

_Nine years ago, someone else toyed with her hair. Veles the sniper. Designation EO-5609. Willowy and tall, Brithe felt dwarfed by her. They’d recently graduated from a very different sort of Academy than the one on Arkanis, and were now living together on a new planet in preparation for later missions. Two young woman and one young man shared a small flat; herself, Veles, and Enri. Rather than erupting in pettiness and jealousy in response to their raging hormones, they’d all decided to share. It was working for now. Enri was sweet. She liked Veles, might even love her. The other woman had tan skin and lovely dark hair, straight like she wished hers was. Veles had always been smitten with Brithe’s ginger curls. “Your hair is amazing. It’s like a red halo. Can I touch it?” she’d asked hesitantly on the first night the two of them spent together. People touched her hair on a regular basis, but normally she’d swat their hands away. Veles was different._

_“Yes. You may.”_

_Veles tugged at the end of a strand, releasing it and watching it spring back. “So soft, so red, and it’s just like a spring! Thank you.”_

_“You’re thanking me and I haven’t even kriffed you yet.”_

_“There’s time for that later. Maybe Enri will come back in time to join us. For now I’m happy to play with your hair and tell you how beautiful you are.”_

_“Stop it. You’re prettier than I am. I don’t know what you or Enri sees in me.” That sounded like she was fishing for compliments, but it came from the heart. Veles knew it._

_“ You’re a liar. I’ll kiss you to shut you up if I have to.”_

_“Do it then.”_

_Veles kissed her and plunged her hands into the waterfall of her hair._

_Three years later, Brendol Hux unzipped her fly and shoved his hand down her panties. He could feel her legs trembling. Dryness where she should have been dripping if she were truly interested. “You’ll thank me later,” he said._

_“So bold,” EO-3752 shot back. She was being EO-3752 tonight, prioritizing her mission. Brithe would have liquified Brendol’s testicles by now. “You haven’t even made me wet. And your obsession with guided missiles makes me think you’re compensating for something. You’ve got a lot of work to do.”_

_“Shut up,” he growled, and smothered her mouth with his._

Brithe’s mug shook in her hands and the tea sloshed out onto the floor. The handle slipped from between her fingers and with a crash it broke.

“I’ll get a sponge and the dustpan, Mother.” Armie was such a polite boy. He scurried off into the supply closet and raced back, requisite items in hand. In short order the mess was cleaned up. His mother was still sitting rigidly, her back against the wall. One look into her brown eyes was enough to make him cry. He dissolved into a soggy ball of sobs, gushing snot and tears. His lip opened again.

She snapped out of her memories and focused once more on her son. He was no mind reader, but she had the irrational fear that he somehow _knew._ “What is it, Armie?”

“I wish...I wish you’d got that surgery. Then we wouldn’t have to be here.” The last part came out in a shriek. She took him in her arms, his tears soaking into her shoulder.

“Don’t say things like that, Armie. I’m glad I didn’t get that surgery. It was my body and I made the right choice for it at the time.” She patted his back awkwardly. “Do you know what?”

“What?”

“If I had a child later in life, when I thought I would, he or she wouldn’t be you. And that would make me very sad. You’re the best son I could ever ask for. I love you.”

“I love you too, Mother.”

They stayed like that on the kitchen floor for a long time, pie shells temporarily forgotten. If they held one another tightly enough in the herb-scented air, they could pretend they were safe.


End file.
